This invention relates to soft, water-swellable articles made from crosslinked polyacrylates, methods for their preparation, and to an aqueous solution of polyacrylates which is useful to make absorbent articles.
It is known from U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,669,103 and 3,670,731 that polymeric sorbents that are crosslinked during polymerization can be used to make disposable diapers, dressings and the like.
It is further known from Ser. No. 371,909, filed June 20, 1973 abandoned in favor of continuing application Ser. No. 468,794 filed May 9, 1974, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,980,663, that water swellable articles can be made from post-polymerization crosslinked polyelectrolytes. However, these articles are generally stiff and brittle and generally require a plasticizer to make a film or casting soft enough to be useful in most applications, especially in diapers. A disadvantage of using a plasticizer is that the most effective plasticizers are also humectants and make the polyelectrolyte article very sensitive to high humidity.
For example, if polyacrylates are converted through alkaline ester hydrolysis to the corresponding copolymer of the acrylate and acrylic acid salt, as in Ser. No. 371,909, abandoned in favor of continuing application Ser. No. 468,794, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,980,663, approximately 80% or more of the acrylate mers must be so converted before the polymer becomes water soluble. This is attributed to alkaline attack on the polymer particle from the outside in, whereby the polymer molecules on the outside become much more altered by ester hydrolysis than those on the inside of the particle. At the high degrees of hydrolysis then necessary to solubilize all the polymer, the resulting polymer is more akin to a salt of polyacrylic acid than to a polyacrylate. The softness of the original polyacrylate has been replaced by the glassy brittleness of a salt. This brittleness is highly undesirable in water swellable (absorbent) articles.